1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an agricultural tillage apparatus including disk blades. More particularly, the invention pertains to disk blade cleaners and techniques of keeping disk blades and hub spools clean of dirt/residue buildup on both sides of the disk blade.
2. Description of the Related Art
Agricultural tillage systems including disk blades are widely used. One form of disk blade that is used in tillage systems takes the shape of a dish or bowl. It is used both for cutting trash and for throwing some of the top soil to the side. Typically, a plurality of disk blades are arranged at a relatively close spacing, and they may be mounted on a common shaft with hub spools between adjacent disk blades. When a gang of disk blades is pulled across a field, the soil is tilled, the trash is cut up, mixed with the top soil and some trash is buried. In these devices, to reduce the effect of lateral soil displacement due to complete workage, a second line or gang of disks, facing the other direction, may be placed behind a first line. Other implements also use disk blades, such as listers and bedders.
It is known to use disk blade scrapers to keep the disk blade and hub spools clean of dirt/residue buildup on both sides of disk blade. Current disk blade scrapers only scrape a small area of the concavity of the disk blade and are unable to provide superior blade cleaning performance in all or any one-soil condition. Current scrapers clean the side of the blade; however, under wet sandy loam soils, dirt starts at hub spool/blade transition joint and builds in the corner and continues to build up until dirt fills the total area except where the scraper is located. This may cause the disk blade to ride out of soil.
Therefore, there is a need for a disk blade scraper that provides superior blade cleaning capabilities during field tillage operation in any type of soil conditions. In particular, there is a need for a disk blade scraper that keeps the disk blade and hub spool area from building up with dirt/residue such that the disk blade is kept clean from the disk blade and hub spool area on out to the cutting edge of the disk blade.